Posts tagged ‘mermaid’

This was carved for an Arts and Sciences competition at the Stegby Feast of Friendship this year for an item for a feasting kit. I was lazy, I didn’t write up any documentation to go with the entry, so I lost to an unadorned Viking era horn spoon with awesome amounts of documentation. I’ve been asked to run a collegia on carving for Riverhaven, but I’m not really sure what I would talk about. Carving is what it is… you take stuff away until you have what you’re aiming for or until something breaks.

Mermaid spoon

This spoon was made in stages. I knew what basic profile I wanted it to be, so I drew that onto the block of wood (which by the way is acacia). This was using a hand saw with a cylindrical blade. Then I cut the profile from the other direction. I cheated with this one… I used a cutting disk on a dremel.

Spoon bowls are annoying to carve out. I started by hand, got sick of that, then used the dremel, and eventually finished off with a gouger once I had it to almost the right depth.

After a fair amount of sanding, I had a shape I was pleased with, at which point I started worrying about details. I carved striations into the hair, individual fingers, and used a small gouger to mark her tail with scales.

Closer image of the mermaid’s hair on the spoon

The reverse shows the feature most often attributed to mermaids…

Spoon detail of the tail

I am a little disappointed that I encountered a couple of borer holes in the course of carving, but as I didn’t come across them until fairly late in the piece, I decided there was nothing to do about it, and set to polishing. That was the end of my work on the spoon prior to its entry into the competition.

At this stage, I’ve decided I need to continue work on my mermaid. I haven’t done a lot of work with wood before, so the polishing has been mainly hard work and very little in the way of cutting compounds or sealants as I didn’t want to run the risk of contaminating the wood. Using the spoon once has convinced me that I need to seal the wood before using it again. So it’s time for me to look at food-safe options.